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WHAT IS MAAFA? |
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS To celebrate the 10th anniversary (2005) of the San
Francisco Bay Area's "Black Holocaust Remembrance," scholars,
poets, writers and artists are invited to submit work for inclusion
in the "Maafa Reader." The goal is to have a reflective
record of the various ways African people in the Diaspora recall the
Middle Passage, honor the ancestors and heal the trauma.
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| WANDA ALI BATIN SABIR *founder | |
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Wanda Sabir is the founder of the Maafa ritual
and surrounding events in the San Francisco bay area. She has been
doing this for over ten years now. |
"It goes without question that Black people, particularly those in the Western Hemisphere suffering from Post-traumatic Slavery Syndrome, are more in need than others in the African Diaspora for a healing, a collective laying on of hands, a new formula, attitude, way of looking at the world and our place in it that promotes mental and emotional health and well-being. The Maafa Ritual helps us put the situation in a context as we recall those painful memories and lay them to rest, this spiritual return to the ships, plantations, auction blocks … dungeon, deserted beach – cyclical movements turning then releasing the tight bands of subconsciousness which keep us tense, frightened and constrained … stuck. The path to wellness, to health, is both individual and collective. It’s also ongoing. " click here to view Wanda's resume
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information on the... Maafa Reader Narrative By Wanda Sabir The story of African people and how they arrived in America is an opera, tragic in its simplicity, a true story which remains unexamined, its descendents trapped in memories too horrific to speak, yet speak we must. I am interested in these stories. The Maafa or "the calamity" in the Kiswahili language, is a part of a larger vision, one where Sankofa - Africans "going back to fetch it," fetching resources and guidance from the ancestors celebrated in the Maafa ritual," and Ayaresa - "health and well-being," also have equal value. If a people do not remember and celebrate their past-- Sankofa, they really have no sense of who they are and cannot effectively move forward with Ayaresa. The book project is a means to establish a dialogue, a conversation between descents of enslaved Africans who had to create a new life when everything familiar was taken away. The book will be divided into sections: At Home, Taken, In Transit, Disconnected, Lost, and Found. Each section will begin with a preface, written by the editor, which sets the tone for the selections to come - from the artists and scholars whose work was accepted. This book will also discuss this need for closure, discussion and acknowledgement, how else can one explain the simultaneous creation of Maafa rituals throughout America in Oakland, New York, Galveston, Chicago, Seattle, Detroit, and New Orleans. Something is definitely in the air. I'd like the opportunity to explore these phenomena in a literary work. Akintiunde Kofi Camara, creator of Eintou, a unique African American poetic form and African American historico-cultural philosophy with the musical strategies of the blues and jazz, writes in a submission to the Maafa Reader Project: Were I a reader of African humanity, upon whose pages was inscribed the wisdoms of the ages, then the Maafa would be a 350 paged chapter of diatribes on my lowest, darkest hour, during which white power soured the sweet taste of liberty, and his greed lead blindly to chains, whips and sordid quips about colored skin.. Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz writes in Hush Child Hush, another submission to the Maafa Reader Project: In May 1991, the United States General Services Administration began preliminary work for a federal office tower at Broadway and Duane Streets and the former gravesite, stretching five acres, was unearthed. The land had been allocated to the city's black population, some free, most enslaved, in the late 1600's when even cemeteries were segregated. With the passage of time, the original intent of the land became memory until the excavation more than a decade ago. I knew we wouldn't always be forgotten. Kenneth McManus writes in his submission to the Maafa Reader Project: Memory is key In the recounting of past woe And no mark Serves as a better guide Than the road map of keloid Tissue On my great-great grandmother's Or great-great grandfather's Back Nothing raises up Those memories Like that terrible scar tissue Linking one beating To the next.. Those keloids Tell a keen story And make my tender back Concave To avoid The next anguished slap Of leather.. Mwatabu S. Okantah writes in his submission: "Pilgrimage: Home to Africa," .I come home to Africa to reclaim our untold story and to sink my spiritual roots into native soil. I come to Africa to journey into our collective black Self. I was in Senegal because the winding river or my poetry had emptied into Afreekan ocean, where along the battered coastline of our endurance stood Cheikh Anta Diop, a towering lighthouse, guiding the wandering and the lost into safe shores. .He provided us with the means to restore the historical continuity, and dignity, in our lives. Late in the winter of 1988, I had been commissioned to write an epic poem in his honor. The European Slave Trade begun by the Portuguese in the 1490s, then extended into a North American market by the Spaniards in November, 1526, followed by the English in August, 1916, not only disrupted the lives of African people, it shook the world at its foundation, a slippery and unstable precipice all nations, especially those initial western nations still retain at its foundation. The Maafa, a tragedy and catastrophe of enormous consequences affects all of us in ways imaginable and unimagined. It is my hope that this Reader will bring those hidden variables to the forefront: the humanity issues, the social justice issues, the mental and physical health issues, the historic issues, and the reciprocity issues. The ordeal legally ended on January 1, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, did not address the bigotry and hatred that would fuel a race and class war that continues into the twenty-first century, a war that denies African American citizens their human rights, as spelled out in the United Nations Charter, not to mention equal rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 and subsequent laws, while addressing some of the legal inequities that directly impact African Americans, have not touched the psychological and economic aftermath of this great calamity or Maafa on the African American citizens here in this United States, not to mention Africa and the rest of the African Diaspora. The Maafa Reader Project will look at the broad spectrum of this history-African history which is American history through, as previously mentioned: poetry, prose, scholarly research, photography and other creative genres. The goal is a greater understanding of this period in world history and its impact on society in cities like Oakland, California and parallel developments elsewhere like Johannesburg, South Africa. |